Luigi's second bout of mansion madness remains unreleased in any territory so far and was originally planned for release by Christmas 2012. Clearly unsatisfied with being terrified by one mansion, the 3DS sequel sees the lanky one visit several different haunts. You can read our Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon preview a few times while you wait if you like.

Fire Emblem: Awakening, on the other hand, has been out in Japan since April. It's been steadily building up downloadable content since launch — it was Nintendo's first venture into paid additional content in Japan — so there should be plenty of new characters ready to go by the time it arrives over here next year.

Your guess is as good as ours for exact dates at this point, but it's great to know that they're coming reasonably soon. You've got a few months to save up your pennies — will you be picking any of these games up when they're eventually released?

@The_Other_MThere are Spotpass characters, which use their original Official art and are free, and then there are DLC characters which you do have to pay for. DLC characters all have new art done by guest artists and former Fire Emblem artists and usually come with special items and DLC-exclusive classes as well as the items used to class change your characters to those classes.In Japan though, Marth came free as DLC for a month.

Makes sense to have a "Mario" titled game w/ Paper Mario out for the holidays and then this after. I don't think Luigi has quite the cache on the kid's Christmas lists. Tablets and phones may kill Sony portables but as long as people keep having kids Nintendo can keep selling game systems,

If my knowledge is correct, the American release date is within the same window as the European one. Argh, second quarter.... At least that gives me time to build my funds back up after I blow them on Black 2, NSMB2, LM:DM, AC:CO, possibly an early purchase of the Wii U, and possibly NSMBWU.Wait a sec, that's a lot of money to blow on video games.I think I should buy food instead, unless they finally made videogames edible, then I can get all in one!@Happy_MaskHoly moly dude, taking mah words right out-a mah mouth.